


who’s like us?

by ninemoons42



Series: Dragon Effect - Annika [6]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect
Genre: A Toast To Soldiers, Drinking & Talking, Established Relationship, F/M, Kissing, N7 Day, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annika Shepard <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5JleUiRPs">toasts</a> her fellow Alliance soldiers -- but there's someone in the bar who didn't quite join in, for a few reasons of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who’s like us?

The shot burned, going down, and Annika was grateful both Vega and the other Marines turned away quickly. She wasn’t really up to making disgusted faces in front of them. What the hell had been in that drink anyway? And that was speaking from the fucking awful experience of having been poisoned before. It was nothing she cared to repeat.

A lull, a brief beat of silence in the flashing lights and flailing bodies, and she turned around, eyes darting. A quiet corner. That was what she needed right now. Well, that and probably something close to a liter of water. Everyone else around her was getting good and glassy-eyed and pissed, but that wasn’t what she wanted, and – 

A familiar face. A shadowed corner tucked next to another island of a bar. She squinted, and made out familiar shoulders, and she pushed carefully past a group of asari who danced like commandos and laughed in broken brittle voices, and cleared her throat. She could barely hear her own words over the music. “This seat taken?”

It wasn’t the amused snort that drew her in, though – it was the small smile and the promise of someone to lean on – someone who was often pretty good at guessing at what she needed – and she propped her chin on one hand and waited for the salarian bartender to pass her a tall glass of water.

“You could have joined that toast,” Annika murmured, after a while. The music thrummed in her skin and made the very bar itself vibrate to its insistent rumble, but here in this corner there was no one looking at them and she could pretend that they were just nursing their very soft drinks in companionable silence. “Or did you stop being a soldier in, oh, the last hour or so?”

Another snort. Sharper edges on this one, as sharp as the brief frown that crossed Cullen’s face at her words. “They’re Alliance. I’m – well, I wasn’t one of them for a long time, was I? I probably spent time shooting _at_ them, or people like them.”

“That was then,” Annika said, threading the fingers of her free hand into his. “This is now.”

“Is it,” Cullen asked, and pushed his water away.

“It is.” She nodded, firmly, and leaned against his shoulder. His skin radiated warmth even through his jacket, when he put an arm around her. “Now you’re fighting to save the galaxy. You’re not here for profit or supremacy or whatever bullshit it is the Illusive Man spews out that orifice he calls a mouth and I call an extra asshole.”

It was good to hear Cullen laugh, shadow-smothered and fleeting though the sound might have been.

“I’m fighting for you,” he said, after a moment. “But why am I telling you something you already know?”

“Because I don’t mind hearing it over and over again.” 

“You’re just greedy.”

“I have a right to be,” Annika said as she pressed a chaste kiss to his stubbled cheek. “We could all die at any moment.”

“You keep saying that,” Cullen complained, “and yet you make one hell of a lie out of it.”

Annika smiled, and moved to the edge of her seat to get closer. “So do the same. Here and now. Fight for today and tomorrow and the rest of this fucking war. _With me._ ”

“I’ll drink to that,” Cullen said, but instead of waving for a drink he turned her face up to his, and Annika closed her eyes and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on N7 Day, 2015.
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) and my Dragon Age: Inquisition blog is [here](http://ninemoons42-inquisition.tumblr.com/).


End file.
